7/17/2008

The evil weevil


Rice weevil
Originally uploaded by cpurrin1
When I came home on Sunday evening, I had company. Dozens of these little beetles populated my appartment and after seven hours of vacuuming and more hours of searching the Internet I found out

a) the name and identity of my new roomies (Sitophilus Oryzae or Rice Weevil)
b) the source of troubles, a packet of rice I had got a few weeks before as a souvenir from an Asian country, with hundreds of those little beasts in it.

All in all, there were about 700 to 800 weevils around. At the moment I catch about 20 a day, trend: downward.

I know this will sound cruel, but I intend to put them on a starvation diet.

Thanks for the photo, cpurrin1!

4 comments:

Lydia said...

Well, as my family members in Minnesota would say: "ISH!"

Actually, it's not a bad looking little bug, as bugs go, but good heavens to have them as roommates....ISH.

francessa said...

And what does ISH stand for? Doesn't sound too positive ... ;-)

The acronym database says Information Super Highway! ;-))

I hope, there's no rice weevil super highway developing in my apartment!

Lydia said...

Ha! I just saw that your label for this post is rice weevil evil and that's so funny!

Many Americans will say ICK! when something is sickening or yucky. I have no idea where that began. But when I visited family in Minn. they all said ISH! instead. It sounded so strange to me - - - but I think it sounded stranger to the acronym database!

francessa said...

Lydia, I've already adopted your family's ISH and I'm ISHing all day long! In September, my colleagues and students will sure be ISH-treated as well!

Buttttt, I found out some nice information on the word "ish" and will blog about it soon! Thanks for this! :-)

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